"You're a mean sort of a man, now, ain't you?"
"Well, Mr. Maginn," replied Potts, "I really didn't know Mr. Dingus was there; and the gun went off accidentally, any way."
"Oh, it isn't that," said the coroner—"it isn't that. I don't mind your shooting him, but why in the thunder didn't you kill him while you were at it, and give me a chance? You want to see me starve, don't you? I wish you'd a buried the tooth in his lung and the ball in his liver, and then I'd a had my regular fees. But as it is, I have all the bother and get nothing. I'd starve to death if all men were like you."
And Potts went away with a dim impression that he had injured Maginn rather more than Mr. Dingus.
* * * * *
Coroner Maginn's condition, however, is one of chronic discontent.
Upon the occasion of a recent encounter with him I said to him,
"Business seems to be dull to-day, Mr. Maginn."
"Dull! Well, that's just no name for it. This is the deadest town I ever—Well, exceptin' Jim Busby's tumblin' off the market-house last month, there hasn't been a decent accident in this place since last summer. How'm I goin' to live, I want to know? In other countries people keep things movin'. There are murders and coal-oil explosions and roofs fallin' in—'most always somethin' lively to afford a coroner a chance. But here! Why, I don't get 'nough fees in a year to keep a poll-parrot in water-crackers. I don't—now, that's the honest truth."
"That does seem discouraging."
"And then the worst of it is a man's friends won't stand by him. There's Doolan, the coroner in the next county. He found a drowned man up in the river just beyond the county line. I ought to have had the first shy at the body by rights, for I know well enough he fell in from this county and then skeeted up with the tide. But no; Doolan would hold the inquest; and do you believe that man actually wouldn't float the remains down the river so's I could sit on 'em after he'd got through? Actually took 'em out and buried 'em, although I offered to go halves with him on my fees if he would pass the body down this way. That's a positive fact. He refused. Now, what do you think of a man like that? He hasn't got enough soul in him to be worth preachin' to. That's my opinion."